In the late 1850s many of the most striking places in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana had not yet been surveyed by any government expedition. This book brings to life the expedition that first explored these regions. As the last major government survey of the American West before the Civil War, the Raynolds Expedition began in 1859. This highly readable daily journal of Captain William F. Raynolds, previously unpublished, covers the most challenging period of that expedition, from May 7 to July 4, 1860. It describes what the Raynolds party did and saw while traveling from its winter quarters near today’s Glenrock, Wyoming, up to the head of the Wind River, through Jackson Hole, and on to the Three Forks of the Missouri in southwestern Montana. The party included legendary mountain man Jim Bridger, geologist Ferdinand Hayden, and artists Anton Schönborn and James Hutton, among the first to depict the Teton Range. Historians, travelers, and outdoor enthusiasts will welcome this important addition to the literature of western exploration.

Even among iconic frontiersmen like John C. Frémont, Kit Carson, and Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger stands out. A mountain man of the American West, straddling the fur trade era and the age of exploration, he lived the life legends are made of. His adventures are fit for remaking into the tall tales Bridger himself liked to tell. Here, in a biography that finally gives this outsize character his due, Jerry Enzler takes this frontiersman’s full measure for the first time—and tells a story that would do Jim Bridger proud. Born in 1804 and orphaned at thirteen, Bridger made his first western foray in 1822, traveling up the Missouri River with Mike Fink and a hundred enterprising young men to trap beaver. At twenty he “discovered” the Great Salt Lake. At twenty-one he was the first to paddle the Bighorn River’s Bad Pass. At twenty-two he explored the wonders of Yellowstone. In the following years, he led trapping brigades into Blackfeet territory; guided expeditions of Smithsonian scientists, topographical engineers, and army leaders; and, though he could neither read nor write, mapped the tribal boundaries for the Great Indian Treaty of 1851. Enzler charts Bridger’s path from the fort he built on the Oregon Trail to the route he blazed for Montana gold miners to avert war with Red Cloud and his Lakota coalition. Along the way he married into the Flathead, Ute, and Shoshone tribes and produced seven children. Tapping sources uncovered in the six decades since the last documented Bridger biography, Enzler’s book fully conveys the drama and details of the larger-than-life history of the “King of the Mountain Men.” This is the definitive story of an extraordinary life.

When Katharine's father dies in 1864, leaving her destitute, her cousin "sells" her to the beastly One-Eye Murray. She then flees west into the wilderness, but One-Eye hires Sun-Shot O'Neill to track the girl across the wasteland to "save" his investment. "A classic tale of survival against all odds, Lone Runner is a superb cat-and-mouse western suspense tale filled with tension, poignancy, and gritty realism"--Robert Reginald.

When Katharine's father dies in 1864, leaving her destitute, her cousin "sells" her to the beastly One-Eye Murray. She then flees west into the wilderness, but One-Eye hires Sun-Shot O'Neill to track the girl across the wasteland to "save" his investment. "A classic tale of survival against all odds, Lone Runner is a superb cat-and-mouse western suspense tale filled with tension, poignancy, and gritty realism"--Robert Reginald.

See the world through the eyes of some of the most celebrated and admired people of our time in this engaging new travel book. Award-winning author and National Geographic Traveler writer Jerry Camarillo Dunn takes you on a remarkable journey with such amazing and diverse figures as Sandra Day O’Connor and the Dalai Lama, actors Robin Williams and Morgan Freeman, astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Sally Ride, explorer Jean-Michel Cousteau, real estate mogul Donald Trump, entertainer Jerry Seinfeld, food guru Alice Waters, and author Tony Hillerman. His simple question to these people: What is your favorite travel discovery? The answers are both surprising and engaging—ranging from Bali Indonesia to a well-used bench at San Francisco’s Crissy Field, from the Hopi Mesas in Arizona to the Old City of Jerusalem. In page after page, celebrated contributors describe the special appeal of each place—be it the amazing beauty, or the character of the people, or simply the hushed joy of solitude. To enhance the stories further, Dunn scoured the files of National Geographic to create sidebars full of intriguing information about each place—and even steers you to websites that tell how you can visit them yourself. But the real allure is the entertaining narrative, inviting readers to experience the excitement of traveling with these celebrated personalities to their favorite places on Earth. For a complete list of contributing authors and more information, visit the author's website at www.myfavoriteplacenatgeo.com.

By the author of the New York Times bestselling Everest: Mountain Without Mercy, this chronicle of the iconic first American expedition to Mt. Everest in May 1963 – published to coincide with the climb's 50th anniversary­ – combines riveting adventure, a perceptive analysis of its dark and terrifying historical context, and revelations about a secret mission that followed. In the midst of the Cold War, against the backdrop of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the space race with the Soviet Union, and the quagmire of the Vietnam War, a band of iconoclastic, independent-minded American mountaineers set off for Mt. Everest, aiming to restore America's confidence and optimism. Their objective is to reach the summit while conducting scientific research, but which route will they take? Might the Chinese, in a public relations coup, have reached the top ahead of them? And what about another American team, led by the grandson of a President, that nearly bagged the peak in a bootleg attempt a year earlier? The Vast Unknown is, on one level, a harrowing, character-driven account of the climb itself and its legendary team of alternately inspiring, troubled, and tragic climbers who suffered injuries, a near mutiny, and death on the mountain. It is also an examination of the profound sway the expedition had over the American consciousness and sense of identity during a time when the country was floundering. And it is an investigation of the expedition's little-known outcome: the selection of a team to plant a CIA surveillance device on the Himalayan peak of Nanda Devi, to spy into China where Defense Intelligence learned that nuclear missile testing was underway.